Stefan and Lotte in Paradise: a Collaborative Opera by Marcos Lucas and Alan Edward Williams

Introduction

This article concerns the composition of an opera which is unusual because it is a collaboration between two composers. Generally speaking, composers are solitary creatures, and while they often collaborate with writers and choreographers, it’s very uncommon for them to collaborate with each other on a single piece of music.

The genesis of this project was in May 2010, when Marcos Lucas visited Alan Williams in Salford University, UK. The story of Stefan Zweig was already well known to Marcos, as his wife’s family came from Petropolis, where Zweig spent the last 9 months of his life, in the house at Rua Gonçalves Dias. The story of Zweig’s exile and death had come to Alan Williams’ attention independently via a footnote from a book, co-incidentally by Richard Williams, his brother, about Brazilian architecture, which referred to Zweig’s Brazil: a Land of the Future. As the idea had emerged simultaneously, but independently, of creating a piece of music theatre about Zweig’s Brazilian exile, we began by jokingly discussing a jointly composed work. Gradually these discussions became more serious, as we began to consider how the process might work.

We had a growing sense of confidence in our ability to collaborate on the musical material, as we had known each other as PhD students in the University of Manchester between 1995 and 1999, and had shared concerts of our music. In addition, we had recently both begun pieces written for GNU, the contemporary music ensemble based in Rio de Janeiro, with almost the same harmony, quite by chance. Or perhaps, given our training at Manchester, and our common interest in the modernist music of the Eastern European composers such as Witold Lutoslawski and György Kurtág, not quite by chance. In any case, this co-incidence emboldened us to attempt a joint work.

The Scenario

Stefan Zweig was at one time the most translated author in the world. He came from a wealthy textile manufacturing family who were eminent members of the Viennese Jewish community. After years in the public eye as a writer and intellectual he was forced because of his ethnicity to flee Austria – ultimately abandoning most of his possessions in the process – when it became impossible for him to pursue a career in German letters any longer. He settled initially in London, where he was a close confidant of Sigmund Freud, then in Bath, finally leaving Europe altogether, and living alternately in New York and Brazil. He and his second wife Lotte Altmann spent the last nine months of their lives in Petropolis – a small city which ironically had been settled by Germans in the mid-19th century. He and Lotte were found dead, poisoned by the sleeping drug Veronal on February 22nd 1942, apparently having taken their own lives.

After numerous attempts at developing a scenario, it really only started to take shape once the title had been decided – Stefan and Lotte in Paradise. This title clearly refers to Alberto Dines authoritative biography of Zweig, Morte no Paraíso. The unique feature of this biography is the focus given to the period in exile in Brazil. One searches in vain in other biographies for the detail of this period which Dines is able to provide, and even in recent works such as Oliver Matuschek’s otherwise extremely comprehensive biography, Stefan Zweig: Drei Leben this period of exile and final despair is given little attention. Other writers and creative artists have referred more extensively to the period of the Zweigs’ exile in Brazil, but in ways which did not inspire us with confidence that the historical reality had always taken precedence over artistic imagination. Such are, for example, Silvio Back’s film Lost Zweig, and Laurent Seksik’s Les Derniers Jours de Stefan Zweig. Other works, by the protagonists themselves, such as Zweig’s first wife Friderike’s memoir of Zweig, and naturally, Zweig’s own The World of Yesterdaywere more useful, as long as we read between the lines, as it were – the juxtaposition of these two widely differing accounts of the same period is revealing.

The necessary next step in crystalising the scenario was in appointing a librettist, someone well versed in theatrical adaptations; fortunately, in Alan Williams’ frequent collaborator Philip Goulding, we had the ideal candidate. Williams and Goulding had already co-written a song cycle, several choral settings, theatre songs and a full-scale oratorio, and it was natural to turn to this existing partnership in creating the scenario. Marcos Lucas was generous enough to adapt himself to this existing partnership; and this had the advantage that the already established working method of the British pair could be adopted in this project. This consisted of Alan Williams providing a sketch of a scenario, which Philip Goulding was free to use, adapt or discard as he saw fit; in turn the same liberty pertained in the way the composers would treat the libretto. It was thanks to the generosity of the University of Salford that development money was provided in order for the libretto to be written. It was the Zweigs’ own words which proved most helpful to Philip Goulding in constructing the libretto – in this regard the work could not have been completed had it not been for the timely appearance in print of Oliver Marshall and Darien Davis’ comprehensive Stefan and Lotte Zweig’s South American Letters: New York, Argentina and Brazil, 1940-42 (NY: Continuum, 2010). We are very grateful to the editors for the use of their work.

We ended up with a kind of extended song cycle for two characters – Stefan Zweig and Lotte, his wife. This was to be a semi-staged psycho-drama, along the lines of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle. However, as we began to think of the work as a dramatic reality, which needed to be staged, we felt the need for a third character. Before the process of composition began, we asked Philip Goulding for a substantial re-write. During this process, the character of the Zweigs’ neighbour, and fellow German-speaking exile Ernst Feder emerged. Feder’s role in the opera is partly to generate action – the interplay between him and Zweig helps to reveal the relationship between Zweig and his wife; in addition it enabled us to have a framing device in the form of a narrator. This became more important as we considered the role of reminiscence in the opera. Without Feder, there is little reason for Zweig to reminisce, since, one presumes, Lotte would have known all the stories Zweig was going to tell about his own past. The one exception to this observation was that Lotte of course served as Zweig’s secretary, so it was always the plan to use their joint work on The World of Yesterday as a pretext for telling the stories of his past. But this one device, we felt, would rapidly become worn out for audiences, whereas Feder’s presence acts as a sounding board for these reminiscences.

As the main character in an opera, Zweig clearly resembles the figure of the anti-hero, so common in early 20th Century operas, such as Berg’s Wozzeck, or Britten’s Peter Grimes. He does not fit in Brazil, it’s clear – such is the life of the exile. But it’s also clear that his depression is much more deeply rooted than simply having been brought on by exile. He is ultimately alienated from home, from his own language and culture, and from his cosmopolitan ideals. As in Mahler, Zweig self-consciously embodies the figure of the ‘wandering Jew’.

The Zweig Manuscript Collection

Another factor in the development of the scenario was the extensive collection of manuscripts including literature, but especially of music, by the ‘great’ figures of European civilization, such as Mozart, J.S. Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner and numerous other stellar figures from the Classical and Romantic tradition. Although Zweig’s manuscript collection was at its largest in Salzburg prior to his emigration to London in 1934, much of the collection survived the war, and is now housed in the British Library. We undertook some research in this archive as preparatory work. This work revealed that the relatively few works of modern music, by Bartók, Berg, Webern and others, which are contained within the collection, are virtually all posthumous additions. Zweig attempted to sell the greater part of his collection in 1936 via the manuscript handler Heinrich Hinterberger. What remained, one can presume, was regarded by Zweig as being particularly valuable. A relatively small collection of songs, arias and instrumental music falls into this category, including Schubert’s An Die Musik; Brahms’ Zigeunerlieder, Mozart’s song Das Veilchen, and Cherubino’s aria from The Marriage of Figaro. This music, alongside music which was contemporary with the action depicted in the opera, including Gustav Pick’s Fiakerlied (which Friderike Zweig claims was being played when she and Stefan first met), and Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (mentioned in Zweig’s The World of Yesterday) are referred to in the musical material we developed. This network of musical references allowed us to suggest the multiple layers of historical reference entailed by the subject matter.

The interplay of historical reference in musical material is a idea which formed the basis for much of the composition of the later half of the 20th Century; Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia, for example, uses the idea – which was important to Mahler – of borrowing musical material from other pieces in order to show a historical consciousness of the path which has led to the present work. Adorno commented on Mahler’s historical consciousness as being revealed in “fragments and scraps of memory”, and it seemed appropriate for us to use such fragments in what is basically the story of one man’s abandonment of his faith in civilization.

Compositional Process

From the start of the process, we had been thinking about Manchester-based contemporary music ensemble Psappha as possible interpreters of the music. We were both familiar with their work in the UK since having been students together in the University of Manchester in the mid 90’s. Psappha have an exceptional reputation in the area of music theatre, in particular having performed several works by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, who serves as their Patron, and recently composed a new music theatre work for them.

We decided to use most of the core instrumentation of this group, clarinet, violin, cello and cimbalom, the Central European hammered dulcimer, as well as percussion. In this way we would create an aural connection with the Klezmer band, but also with various other ensembles, such as that of the Brazilian choro group, and classical chamber music.

Our composition process started with discussion of the libretto, and choosing a scene each to compose independently. Having each sketched a scene, we then analysed our own material, identifying important musical ideas, and exchanged these, with the aim that the other composer would use this material as well as his own. We were also pleasantly surprised at the degree of similarity there existed between this material. For example, Marcos’ note row begins with the same few notes as a motive independently arrived at by Alan. Also interesting was the fact that the Brazilian composer’s music resembled central European modernism more than the European composer’s music, which showed more heritage of Brazilian popular music. From these initial starting points, we aimed at a kind of convergence of material, and style, albeit still allowing a degree of poly-stylistic variety.

Staging and Production

The opportunity to stage the premiere in the University of Salford’s Media City UK building presents a number of possibilities not available in a conventional theatre or concert hall space. Firstly, the Digital Performance Lab combines the flexibility of a Black Box theatre with one of the largest internal projection screens in the region, allowing an immersive use of projected imagery instead of conventional scenery. This means that whereas in a conventional theatre, scene changes would not be possible mid-scene, instantaneous shift of location from Rio de Janeiro to a reminiscence of Vienna suggested by the libretto can be achieved.